Youngest
by silverangel83
Summary: Wally has a secret that Dick is on the verge of finding out. How will Dick react once he knows? Will their friendship survive? Includes some Spitfire.


"Wally, why do you have two birth certificates?" Dick asked as they were going through some old papers his mom had wanted him to file.

Dick had come over wanting to hang out and decided it would be faster if he helped the speedster with his filing. Wally was hopeless at it. There were files spread all over the living room floor.

Wally hadn't known _that_ would be in the pile. You would have thought his parents would have kept it in a lockbox somewhere, not with all the old files in the file cabinet.

He snatched the papers out of Dick's hands and hid them in a flash. "What are you talking about?"

Dick crossed his arms. "Wally, I'm not falling for that. I didn't get to read all of it, but I did notice they both had your name and your parents name. The weird thing was they had two different years."

"Oh, that. Well, you see the hospital messed up when they made the first one and they let us keep it. It was a typo." Wally said nervously.

Dick rolled his eyes, but dropped the subject. Wally let out a sigh of relief inwardly. He was glad his superspeed allowed him to think up excuses so fast. A lot of the time he thought he'd be lost without it.

Dick could tell he was hiding something, but he let it drop. He'd find out later after his own research.

"I'm gonna go get a snack from the kitchen. Want anything?" Wally asked.

Dick shook his head no. Wally left taking the papers with him.

He took them to his room and put them in locked drawer for safekeeping. Then he swung by the kitchen and scarfed down some food. What would be a snack for him would have been a meal for anyone else.

Dick continued to work while Wally was away. He looked over to a shelf and noticed a photo album. He grabbed it off the shelf and thumbed through it. Most were pictures of Wally when he was a baby and a few of Mary and Rudolph's wedding. The pictures continued on of Wally up until he was about ten years old and then stopped. They seemed to continue the year he turned thirteen. That was strange. Why didn't the West's have any pictures of Wally from the ages of ten through twelve?

He counted back through the school pictures. He counted only seven school pictures. Wally should have had ten school pictures. What had happened those three years that Wally wouldn't have had his picture taken?

He turned the page and found some old class photos of Wally and his grade. The first five class photos had Blue Valley Elementary on the plaque in front of the class along with the grade and teacher's name. Wally looked littler than many of his classmates in the first five pictures. The next set of class photos were from Wally's science club in high school. One for last year and one for this year. Both said Keystone High.

Dick had never known his best friend used to live somewhere called Blue Valley. He wondered what else he didn't know about the speedster. He heard Wally coming back from the kitchen and hastily shoved the album back on the shelf. Wally didn't notice.

Dick stacked the few papers left on the floor in a file and put them in the file cabinet. "All done."

"Great!" Wally shouted enthusiastically. "Let's go play video games!"

He ran off to his room, not waiting for Dick. Dick shook his head following after Wally. Sometimes he felt like _he_ was the older. He wondered if Batman had this problem with Barry.

* * *

Later that night after patrol, Dick was looking up Blue Valley on his laptop. Turned out it was a small town in Nebraska. He wondered what had happened to the West's to make them move from Nebraska to Kansas. He wondered if Bruce knew anything about this.

_Well, duh!_ He thought to himself, _Bruce knows everything about all of the sidekicks._

He turned his attention to hacking the Batcave computer. He only got so far before he triggered a lockdown. Bruce had updated his computers since he had last hacked into them and it seems he had learned how to keep Dick out this time.

Dick pouted. Now Bruce would know he had been trying to look into confidential files.

_Oh, well._ He thought, _I'm already in trouble. Might as well find what I was looking for._

He continued his hacking until he got past the lockdown. He clicked Wally's file and started reading it.

His mouth dropped open in shock. Now the pictures in the album made sense.

How could his best friend have hidden this from him? They told each other everything. Or so he thought.

His shock quickly turned to hurt. Why did Wally think he had to hide this from him?

His hurt turned to anger. He had told Wally his deepest, darkest secret. Wally should have trusted him enough to do the same.

He got up and stormed out of his room only to remember how late it was. He couldn't go to Wally's house now to confront him, it was too late.

He stomped back into his room and set his alarm clock for seven thirty. He knew with the time difference it would be about seven when he got to Wally's house and his parents always went to breakfast on Sunday mornings at six thirty and then went grocery shopping and didn't get back until around ten. He would have plenty of time to interrogate his best friend.

Dick turned out the light and settled down in bed where he tossed and turned for hours before finally falling asleep.

* * *

"Wally! Get up!"

Wally heard a shout and then the blanket was ripped off of him. He whined, reaching out and trying to yank it back, but his hand met empty air. He opened one eye and looked at the clock on his bedside table and groaned. He rolled over and put his pillow over his head.

"Go away! It's too early to get up." Came the muffled reply.

Suddenly, he felt a wet spot on his back. He leaped up with a comical expression on his face. Any other time, Dick would be laughing, but he wasn't in the mood to laugh right now.

"Dude!" Wally shouted, fully awake now.

He pulled the remnants of a water balloon off his wet bed. "You threw a water balloon at me to wake me up? Not cool!"

"How could you not tell me!" Dick yelled glaring at him angrily.

Wally was confused for a moment before Dick shoved two pieces of paper in his face. His birth certificates.

"It wasn't a typo." Dick said lowly.

Wally looked over at the desk drawer where he had locked the papers yesterday. The lock was broken.

"You broke my desk drawer, Dick!" Wally fumed.

Dick glared. "Stop avoiding the subject, Wally. Why didn't you tell me you're only twelve?"

"Hey! I'll be thirteen- I mean _sixteen_ in two months, thank you very much!" Wally shouted childishly.

Dick just glared, his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes turned hurt and he looked older than his thirteen years.

"Wally, I told you my deepest, darkest secret. I thought you trusted me enough to tell me yours."

Wally scoffed and mumbled something Dick didn't catch.

"What was that, Wally?" Dick pressed.

"Um, I said would you tell everyone you were actually younger than you looked? It's not something I go around advertising. For all intents and purposes I am fifteen." Wally said looking anywhere but at Dick.

This time Dick mumbled something Wally didn't catch.

Dick sat down in Wally's desk chair. "How did this even happen?"

Wally sighed. "It happened two and half years ago when I got my powers. I woke up in the hospital three years older than when I was last conscious. Barry thinks that when I got sprayed with the chemicals and the lightning hit, I was aged rapidly. Since I was going through a growth spurt at the time, I was more susceptible to it."

Dick gaped. "How did you deal with it? Didn't people wonder why you were suddenly three years older?"

"That's the reason we moved here. Mom and Dad had to quit their jobs and find new ones here. Barry got me a new birth certificate and had our medical information changed. I'm thinking Batman had something to do with it." Wally answered, becoming more comfortable.

He didn't know why he was so afraid of telling Dick the truth. He should have trusted him. But next to what Dick went through, he felt his experience paled. It seemed petty to tell him something that was so trivial to him now. Not that it was trivial when it happened, but now it just seemed like something in his past. It didn't really affect him anymore. Not for the most part.

"Sounds like Batman's style." Dick answered looking less angry. "But how are you in the tenth grade now? Shouldn't you only be in, like, seventh or something? Growing fast doesn't equal growing smarter."

"Well, yes and no. You see, I was already a grade ahead-" Wally started before being interrupted.

Dick's eyes widened. "That's why you were so much smaller than the other kids in your class photo!"

Wally blushed remembering how much smaller he was than the other kids in his class. "You looked at my school photos!"

It was now Dick's turn to blush. "Yeah, after you acted so strange when I found your birth certificates, I was curious so I snooped a little."

Wally glared slightly, but continued. "Well as I was saying before you interrupted- I was already a grade ahead. I could have been two grades ahead, but I was already smaller than the other kids, as you pointed out. I didn't want to stick out any more than I already did. Which was a lot. Being a year younger than your classmates, having red hair, and loving science isn't really something that get's you a lot of friends."

Dick felt a swell of sympathy at his friends' words. He knew how Wally felt. Being an orphan from a circus, adopted by the richest man in the country, and speaking English as a second language hadn't made him any quick friends either.

"Then I found with my superspeed came speedthinking also. It was simple to skip ahead two years." Wally stated matter of factly, not boasting at all.

Dick was a little surprised. He knew Wally was extremely smart for his age, but to this degree? It kind of boggled his mind. Sure, some of it was his powers, but he had already been really smart before that.

A thought suddenly occurred to Dick. "This is why you always act so immature!"

Wally scowled and pouted. "I don't act immature!"

"Yes you do!"

"No I don't!"

"Yeah-huh!"

"Nu-uh!"

Dick laughed as Wally proved his point. "You didn't age emotionally, did you?"

Wally scowled again. "Maybe."

He was always being told to act his age. He hated that phrase. It didn't really apply to him.

"It's not easy having the emotions of a twelve year old stuck inside the body of a fifteen year old." Wally admitted. "Barry said it'll even out in a few more years."

Wally sounded younger than he ever had before to Dick. He was still trying to come to grips that his best friend was actually a year younger than himself.

"You're not going to tell the others, are you?" Wally suddenly asked interrupting Dick's inner musings.

"If you don't tell my secret, I won't tell yours." Dick answered.

Wally smiled and gave Dick a hug. Dick smiled and hugged him back. They pulled apart after a minute.

"Hey, what was that you mumbled earlier?" Dick asked.

Wally should have known Dick wouldn't have left that alone.

"I-um, I said that wasn't my darkest secret." Wally said uneasily.

"You have more secrets!?" Dick said looking slightly peeved.

"Relax, I'll tell you! I don't want to hide anything from you anymore." Wally tried to appease Dick.

Dick waved his hand to tell him to go on.

"Uh, you see…when my family had to move here, things got pretty bad. My dad couldn't find work and my mom was having to work all the time. I was trying to adjust to being in a teenage body. I couldn't always control my emotions and I was still trying to control my powers at the same time. It lead to some tense times." Wally got teary eyed for a minute before continuing. "My dad started drinking and he and mom always got into these fights. Nothing physical, just yelling. They were awful, though. I thought they were going to split up. And I knew it was all my fault."

Dick was on the verge of tears himself, hearing Wally explain about how his family had been falling apart.

Wally continued. "One day after school, I was in a sour mood. I couldn't seem to do anything right and I snapped at my dad. He had been drinking and he slapped me. I couldn't believe it and I ran upstairs to my room and locked the door. The action must have sobered him up, though, because he followed me and tried to apologize. I didn't come out for the rest of the night, not even for dinner."

"In the morning, my dad was gone and my mom sat me down to talk. She told me that dad had realized that he had gone too far and he had admitted himself to a rehab program. He would be back in two weeks. After two weeks, he came back and he looked better, happier. He apologized to me and mom and we hugged. He told mom and me that he had found a job through the program. We all went to family therapy sessions and after awhile things seemed like they were before." Wally finished, wiping his eyes with his sleeve quickly.

Dick knew he meant before Wally had gotten superspeed. He could see in his eyes that Wally still blamed himself for his family's troubles even if things did turn out alright in the end. Dick knew things could have turned out much worse, though. He'd have to watch Rudolph West for signs of drinking.

He pulled Wally into a hug which the speedster returned gratefully.

"You know none of this is your fault, Wally. Something else would have set your dad off sooner or later." Dick told him.

Wally sobbed into Dick's shoulder. He had waited years for someone to tell him those words. He never thought it would be Dick.

After he stopped crying, Wally sat up a little embarrassed.

"So, what was it that you mumbled?" He said trying to take the attention off of himself.

"What?" Dick said, confused.

"Earlier, you mumbled something too. Right after I told you why I didn't want everyone knowing my secret." Wally explained.

"Oh, right. Well, I said I'm not everyone. You could have trusted me with this, you know. I wouldn't have made fun of you." Dick reprimanded.

Wally looked a little ashamed. "I do trust you. It's just…I don't feel like what I went through is as bad as what you went through. It didn't seem important enough to bother you with."

"Wally, I would never have thought that. What you went through is important to me, because _you're _important to me. You're my best friend."

Wally sniffled and punched Dick's arm. "Don't go all cheesy on me now."

Dick just smiled.

Wally jumped up wiping his eyes with his sleeve again. "Wow, my allergies are really bad today."

"You don't have allergies, doofus." Dicks smirked.

* * *

The years went by and Dick didn't tell anyone Wally's secret. Wally and Artemis started going out after that night on New Year's Eve. A year later Wally told Artemis his secret. She broke up with him for awhile, finding it strange that she was really dating a fourteen year old and he had only been thirteen when they got together. Eventually they got back together, though and went off to college together.

When Wally was nineteen (sixteen) he seemed to reach his full height. Dick was catching up to him. Two years later and Dick had surpassed him, to Wally's chagrin. Now he was shorter than his best friend.

Later that year, Wally noticed that he had started growing again. It wasn't until he got together with the team after Artemis' undercover fiasco that he realized it. He was the same height as Dick now.

Dick noticed too. After awhile he led Wally to another room to talk privately.

"So I noticed you've grown some." Dick said after closing the door.

Wally nodded. "Yeah, it's weird. I thought I would have been done growing by now."

"I was thinking about that and I think I figured it out. Your body stopped growing for three years after you turned nineteen right? And you stopped using your powers around then too."Wally shrugged. "Yeah, so?"

Dick was getting animated now. "Well, I was thinking that maybe you are your actual age now. I mean, when you stopped using your powers so much your body slowed it's growth for three years and now you're physically the age you're supposed to be."

Wally's mouth formed an O. "You really think so?"

Dick nodded. "I'd have to do tests to be sure, but I think that would be the conclusion."

"So I'm physically eighteen now, but legally twenty-one." Wally face palmed. This was getting complicated and giving him a headache to think about. "Which age do I go with now? I mean, I can't suddenly be eighteen again."

"It's not that bad. No one else will notice. You just look a few years younger than you should to everyone else. It happens all the time to people." Dick tried to comfort.

Wally groaned. "This is just so messed up!"

Artemis came in the room and asked what was going on. Dick told her his theory and Artemis chuckled.

"That explains why you never grew out of your horny teenage years." She grinned.

Suddenly she got a serious look on her face. "Oh my god, this means I have been having sex with a minor. I could go to jail!"

"No it doesn't, Artemis. I was already physically eighteen when we first got together. It's more like I got frozen at eighteen for three years." Wally said wrapping her in a hug.

Artemis sighed with relief and Dick looked uncomfortable. He wished they had waited until he had left the room before talking about there sex life.

He decided that was exactly what he should do. He left them in the room in each others arms.

* * *

**A/N: This story just hit me today (along with another one that is probably going to be a lot longer that I might or might not post) and I ended up writing it all down in one day. I hope someone else likes it, though I kind of doubt it. Also, this is the end. If someone else wants to add more to this story, feel free to continue it.**


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